Site Visit: Kenowa Hills Public Schools

See personalized learning in action at the Kenowa Hills Public School District

You have heard about personalized learning, but what does it actually look like in a classroom, school, and district? On Tuesday, May 2, Kenowa Hills is welcoming up to 50 educators to visit their elementary, middle, and high schools for guided classroom tours, mini-presentations, and Q & A sessions with teachers, students and school leaders. This is a FREE opportunity open to all educators

How Kenowa Hills is Personalizing Learning

Between 2013-2016, Kenowa Hills Public Schools worked with Marzano Research and Re-Inventing Schools to begin transforming the district from a traditional time-based system to one based on personalized learning and competency-based practices. They call this approach “Personal Mastery”. Kenowa Hills utilized Marzano’s High Reliability Schools (HRS) (2014) framework to develop a strategic implementation plan to support this paradigm shift. As such, the site visit will be framed around the following HRS components:

Safe and Collaborative Culture

Effective Teaching in Every Classroom

Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum

Standards-Referenced Reporting

Competency-Based Education​

​2016-2017 School Year

To start this school year, Kenowa Hills Public Schools has partnered with KnowledgeWorks to deepen their implementation of a Personal Mastery system of education. KnowledgeWorks is a non-profit organization, “committed to providing every learner with meaningful personalized learning experiences that ensure success in college, career and civic life” (website, n.d.). With a presence in over 30 states, KnowledgeWorks brings a national perspective on best practices to the important work of personalizing learning. During the site visit, Kenowa’s KnowledgeWorks coach, Laura Hilger, will join participants for conversations and informal dialogue. This will be a great opportunity to connect with Ms. Hilger about how others districts throughout the nation are implementing highly effective personalized learning practices.

Beyond highlights of the five HRS components, the site visit will also include: